Foucault and the “Lesson” of the Prisoner Support Movement

Abstract

Shocked by harsh prison conditions in France, Michel Foucault in February 1971 co-founded the Information Group on Prisons (GIP), a group dedicated to heightening public intolerance towards the prison system by facilitating the voices of prisoners themselves. Foucault immersed himself in the activities of the GIP for the better part of two years. This article explores the intricacies of Foucault's involvement in the group in order to elucidate his approach to theory and practice. The article submits that a kind of dialectic between Foucault's theory and practice emerged throughout the early 1970s, with his theories both arising from his participation in collective struggles against the prison and serving to inform such practices after his withdrawal from the prisoner support movement. Examining this dialectic helps us appreciate the extent to which resistance truly pervaded Foucault's seminal account of disciplinary power and the prison in his Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Notes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Political Science Association, the 2010 meeting of the Association for Political Theory and the 2011 Radical Foucault conference at the University of East London. I want to thank Cornel West, Todd May, Lawrie Balfour, Shannon Mariotti, Stephen Shapiro, Anne Schwan, George Ciccariello-Maher, Richard Lynch, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments, criticisms, and suggestions.

¹ On the view that Foucault's enthusiasm for the Iranian revolution grew out of an Orientalist privileging of tradition present in his theories, see Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), especially pp. 3, 8–9, 135. For the view that Foucault's enthusiasm for this revolution derived from an Orientalism that disrupted his commitment to archeology in particular, see Rosemarie Scullion, “Michel Foucault the Orientalist: On Revolutionary Iran and the Spirit of Islam,” South Central Review, 12:2 (1995), pp. 16–40. For a reading that situates Foucault's sensitivity towards the religious dynamics of the Iranian revolution in the context of his personal-political experiences in Poland and Brazil rather than in an overarching theoretical outlook, see James Bernauer, “An Uncritical Foucault?: Foucault and the Iranian Revolution,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 32 (2006), pp. 781–786.

² Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, p. 8.

³ Cecile Brich, “The Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons: The Voice of Prisoners? Or Foucault's?” Foucault Studies 5 (2008), pp. 26–47.

⁴ Michael Welch, “Pastoral Power as Penal Resistance: Foucault and the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,” Punishment & Society 12:1 (2010), pp. 47–63.

⁵ Keith Gandal, “Michel Foucault: Intellectual Work and Politics,” Telos 67 (1986), p. 122.

⁹ Michel Foucault, “Toujours les prisons,” in Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Dits et écrits: 1954–1988, Vol. 2 (Paris: Quarto/Gallimard, 2001), p. 916, translation and emphasis the author's.

⁶ Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. 30.

⁷ Michel Foucault, “The History of Sexuality,” in Colin Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 184.

⁸ Michel Foucault, “Discussion avec la Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire destinée au journal Rouge,” Early 1978, C 82, Audio Cassette, Fonds Foucault, Institut Mémoires de l'Édition Contemporaine, Caen, France, transcription and translation the author's.

¹⁰ Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 102.

¹¹ Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States (New York: Praeger, 1988), 103, 107.

¹² David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 258.

¹³ Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism, p. 119.

¹⁴ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 259.

¹⁵ Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 226; Philippe Artières, Laurent Quéro, and Michelle Zancarani-Fournel (eds), Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons: Archives d'une lutte 1970–1972 (Paris: Éditions de l'IMEC, 2003), pp. 328–329.

¹⁷ Foucault, quoted in ibid.

¹⁹ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons (Paris: Champ Libre, 1971), translation the author's.

¹⁶ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 262.

¹⁸ Foucault, quoted in ibid., 258. Foucault would describe the prison as “that darkest region of justice” in Discipline and Punish, p. 256.

²⁰ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 234–235, 264–271.

²¹ Michel Foucault, “Je perçois l'intolérable,” in Daniel Defert and François Ewald (eds), Dits et écrits: 1954–1988, Vol. 1 (Paris: Quarto/Gallimard, 2001), p. 1072, translation the author's.

²² Brich, “Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,” p. 28.

²³ On the significance of investigations in French Maoism, especially in Alain Badiou's thought, see Bruno Bosteels, “Post-Maoism: Badiou and Politics,” Alain Badiou and the Cultural Revolution, Special Issue of Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 13:3 (Winter 2005), pp. 578–583. On the role of investigations in Quaderni Rossi, see Steve Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 21–25, 32–62.

²⁴ Michel Foucault, “Non, ce n'est pas une enquête officielle …,” in Artières, Quéro, and Zancarani-Fournel, Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons, p. 67; Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 258.

²⁵ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons.

²⁶ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans une prison-modèle: Fleury-Mérogis (Paris: Champ Libre, 1971).

²⁷ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Suicides de prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).

²⁸ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, L'Assassinat de George Jackson (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).

²⁹ Brich, “Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,” pp. 30–41.

³⁰ Brich, “Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,”, 34, 46.

³¹ Brich, “Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,”, 28, emphasis added.

³² Michel Foucault, “(Sur les prisons),” in Defert and Ewald, Dits et écrits: 1954–1988, Vol. 1, p. 1044, translation the author's.

³³ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 3, translation the author's.

³⁴ Brich, “Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,” p. 38. I also find Michael Welch's suggestion that the GIP exercised pastoral power vis-à-vis prisoners and that, accordingly, its “ultimate task” consisted in “improving the salut (safety) and santé (health) of those incarcerated” problematic: Welch, “Pastoral Power as Penal Resistance,” p. 53. This understanding of the purpose of the GIP seems to sit too easily with the reformism that the GIP explicitly challenged. It also seems to assume the absence of a critical perspective on the exercise of pastoral power by Foucault, even though this power configured modern governmentalities and bore very strong affinities with disciplinary power, such as individualization and perpetual observation. On pastoral power, see Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), pp. 123–226.

³⁵ In his final and unfinished work, Jean Genet treated these revolts as nothing short of a deeply disruptive awakening, describing them as a “wind” that was about “to blow through the prisons and upset the nocturnal activity that had been going on there for so long – rotting, railing, groaning, wailing, dreaming solitary but proud.” See Jean Genet, Prisoner of Love, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: New York Review Books, 2003), p. 363.

³⁶ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 272.

³⁷ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, 274–275; Artières, Quéro, and Zancarani-Fournel, Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, pp. 134–135.

³⁸ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 279.

³⁹ Artières, Quéro, and Zancarani-Fournel, Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, p. 191.

⁴⁰ Artières, Quéro, and Zancarani-Fournel, Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, 135.

⁴¹ Édith Rose, “Rapport de Mme Rose psychiatre de la Centrale de Toul,” in ibid., 165.

⁴² Rose exhibited features that Foucault would later identify with the highly specific form of truth-telling known as parrhesia in ancient Greece. Rose's denunciation of conditions at Toul exposed her to the risk of a punishment and therefore required her courage. Rose in fact incurred a punishment in the form of a forced departure from the prison service. Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 276. On risk and courage as central features of parrhesia, see Michel Foucault, The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982–1983, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 54–56, 62–66.

⁴³ Michel Foucault, “Pour échapper à leur prison …,” in Artières, Quéro, and Zancarani-Fournel, Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, p. 154, translation the author's.

⁴⁴ Michel Foucault, “Pour échapper à leur prison …,” in Artières, Quéro, and Zancarani-Fournel, Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, 155, translation the author's.

⁴⁵ Michel Foucault, “Il y a un an à peu près …,” in ibid., 196.

⁴⁶ Michel Foucault, “Pour échapper à leur prison …,” in Artières, Quéro, and Zancarani-Fournel, Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, 197–198.

⁴⁷ Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (New York: Verso, 2001), p. 6.

⁴⁸ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 257.

⁴⁹ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, 264, 267–268.

⁵⁰ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, 266.

⁵¹ Defert and Ewald, Dits et écrits, Vol. 1, p. 1063.

⁵² Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, L'Assassinat de George Jackson, pp. 41–61. For the translation, see Michel Foucault, Catharine von Bülow, and Daniel Defert, “The Masked Assassination,” in Joy James (ed.), Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 140–160.

⁵³ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, pp. 270–271.

⁵⁹ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, 289.

⁵⁴ Eribon, Michel Foucault, p. 233.

⁵⁵ Gilles Deleuze, “The Intellectual and Politics: Foucault and the Prison,” History of the Present 2 (Spring 1986), p. 2.

⁵⁶ Welch, “Pastoral Power as Penal Resistance,” p. 58.

⁵⁷ Brich, “Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,” p. 26; Welch, “Pastoral Power as Penal Resistance,” p. 58.

⁵⁸ Macey, Lives of Michel Foucault, pp. 288–289.

⁶⁰ Deleuze, “Intellectual and Politics,” p. 21.

⁶¹ Foucault quoted in Gandal, “Michel Foucault,” p. 127.

⁶² Michel Foucault, “La Société Punitive: transcription simplifiée du cours de Michel Foucault 1972–1973 par M. Jacques Lagrange,” Typewritten Document, Bureau de Mme Marie Renée-Cazaban, Service de Bibliothèques et Archives, Collège de France, Paris, France. The summary for this course can be found in Michel Foucault, “The Punitive Society,” in Paul Rabinow (ed.), Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (New York: New Press, 1998), pp. 23–37.

⁶³ Foucault, “Société Punitive,” p. 192, translation and emphasis the author's.

⁶⁴ Foucault, “Société Punitive,”, 59; Foucault, “Punitive Society,” p. 24.

⁶⁵ Foucault, “Société Punitive,” p. 192, translation the author's.

⁶⁶ Foucault, “Société Punitive,”, 61–64, 192; Foucault, “Punitive Society,” pp. 28–29.

⁶⁷ Foucault, “Société Punitive,” p. 192, translation the author's.

⁶⁹ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 277.

⁶⁸ Foucault, “Punitive Society,” p. 36.

⁷⁰ As far as I can surmise Foucault spoke of disciplinary power for the first time in his March 14, 1973 lecture from The Punitive Society. See Foucault, “Société Punitive,” p. 171.

⁷¹ As far as I can surmise Foucault spoke of disciplinary power for the first time in his March 14, 1973 lecture from The Punitive Society. See Foucault, “Société Punitive,”, 208, translation the author's.

⁷² Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 256.

⁷³ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 35, translation the author's.

⁷⁴ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, 40.

⁷⁵ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 143.

⁷⁶ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 201.

⁷⁷ Foucault, Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1973–1974, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 75.

⁷⁸ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 23, translation the author's.

⁷⁹ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 6–7.

⁸⁰ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 150–151.

⁸³ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, 41, translation the author's.

⁸¹ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 31, translation the author's.

⁸² Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, 40, translation the author's.

⁸⁴ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, translation the author's.

⁸⁵ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 177.

⁸⁶ Foucault, Psychiatric Power, p. 76.

⁸⁷ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 20, translation the author's.

⁸⁸ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 20, translation the author's.

⁸⁹ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 20, 22, translation the author's.

⁹⁰ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 248.

⁹¹ Le Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, Enquête dans vingt prisons, p. 20, 30.

⁹² Foucault, “Pour échapper à leur prison …,” in Artières et al., Groupe d'information sur les prisons, p. 152, translation and emphasis the author's.

⁹³ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 268, emphasis the author's.

⁹⁴ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 26.

⁹⁵ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 27.

⁹⁶ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 285–292.